OO keeps reformatting headers and page margins

[andrewsawtelle]

Hi, first post on the OO Forums. Glad to be here!

I need to submit documents in .doc format, but it looks like Word and OO have different ways of handling page styles. I need a header on all pages but the first page, and no footers. I created the header by:

• going to Insert -> Header -> Default
• typing in the header
• clicking on the first page
• going to Format -> Styles and Formatting
• clicking on Page Styles
• clicking on First Page

This got rid of the header on the first page, but kept the other headers the same. I set all the margins to 1.25". So far so good. Here's what I found when I closed and opened the document again:

• there was a blank header on the first page
• there were footers on all pages
• the bottom margin had changed to .50"
• there was now a page break after the first paragraph on page 3
• the page styles, as displayed in the Status bar, were as follows:
  • Page 1 - First Page
  • Page 2 - Default
  • Page 3 to end - Convert 1

I don't understand why it does this. Is OO creating a page break because there's a paragraph that spans Pages 1 and Pages 2? Why? I would expect that a word processing program understands that "first page" means whatever is on the first page, and not whatever is before a manually-inserted page break. The page style should be there regardless of how the text gets moved around, whether by moving text around or by changing overall page margins.

I downloaded Microsoft Office Word Viewer to see how it looks like in Word. I noticed that all the changes happened once I saved the normal-looking document in OO in .doc format, before I had closed it in OO. I was therefore looking at the same document in OO and Word Viewer, only it looked normal (how I had just formatted it) in OO and all messed up in Word Viewer.

What am I missing? This is for a work project.

[Zizi64]

I downloaded Microsoft Office Word Viewer to see how it looks like in Word.

What am I missing?

Never store your important documents into an never-standaradized, foreign fileformat. Use the International Standard ODF fileformats, if you want work efficiently with the open source office suites. There is not 100% compatibility between the different file formats. (Never was and never will be.)
For sending the document you can use the PDF export feature of the AOO.

Or you can try the LibreOffice. It has a little bit higher compatibility with the MS file formats.

[floris v]

See [Tutorial] Page styles and headers/footers.

[John_Ha]

Never save your work in .doc files or any other format. Always work in and save all files as .odt files..

If you are absolutely forced to produce a .doc file, then work in and save your work in .odt, and only create a copy as a .doc file at the very end. Why? Because .odt supports all of Writer's features and other file formats may not. That is why Writer warns you when you try to save in another format.

Warning when saving as a .doc file. If you do not see this message, switch it on by Tools > Options > LoadSave > General

save as doc.png (10.79 KiB) Viewed 2784 times

Page styles, breaks and page number are an attribute of the first paragraph on a page even if it is empty or a Heading (or a table at the very top). Note that Heading means a Heading 1 or a Heading 2 etc, and not a Page header as in header/footer.

You can manually insert and delete Page breaks, manually choose the next Page style, and manually change the page number, by placing the cursor in the first paragraph and going Format > Paragraph > Text Flow > Breaks ... (or Table > Properties > Text Flow...) where all these options can be changed.

When you Insert > Manual break > Page break..., the small pop-up window allows you to choose the Page Style for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the break; and also the option to change the page number for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the break.

You can also delete Page breaks by Backspace, or by deleting highlighted text which includes the Page break.

It is very useful to make Page breaks visible by Tools > Options > OpenOffice > Appearance > scroll to Text document > tick Section boundaries > choose a colour for Page and column breaks. Page breaks now show on the screen as a thin coloured line and identify where the problem lies. This is the default setting on recent installations where the Page break appears as a thin blue line.

You can get more information on numbering on pages 135 - 144 in Chapter 4 - Formatting Pages of the Writer Manual.

[keme]

...I need to submit documents in .doc format,

Why? MS Word handles odt files reasonably well. You may get a warning message about "unknown source" or something to that effect, but judging from my limited experience, you get a better result this way than with Writer's doc export. ODF is a well documented public standard. Microsoft's wordprocessing formats are neither well documented nor standard.

...looks like Word and OO have different ways of handling page styles.

Correct. The difference (last time I checked) is that Writer handles page styles, Word doesn't.

• When Writer saves as doc, it emulates the page styles by inserting paragraph formatting as required, and sometimes adding sections and other layout elements.
• When Writer opens a doc file, it interprets page layout info and attempts to create proper page styles from that. The doc storage format provides no method to store page styles, so they have to be created anew each time.

Due to the world not being a perfect place, going back and forth between the two page layout strategies (which is what happens when you save as doc from writer, and open the doc file again in writer) may cause quite a significant buildup of automatically generated "formatting residue". Expect a mess. Expect the mess to escalate each time you open a Word file in Writer, and each time you save as a Word file from Writer.

This is one reason why we recommend to always use native file formats for work in progress, and only save as foreign formats for a final "compatible export".

• there was a blank header on the first page
• there were footers on all pages
• the bottom margin had changed to .50"
• there was now a page break after the first paragraph on page 3
• the page styles, as displayed in the Status bar, were as follows:
  • Page 1 - First Page
  • Page 2 - Default
  • Page 3 to end - Convert 1

Word and Writer handle spacing differently (e.g. headers/footers seen as "marginalia" vs elements for the text area). That, in conjunction with what is said above about the difference in handling/storing page layout settings, is probably what is causing the changes you see.